AP - Global challenges like soaring oil prices and the Earth's rising temperature await President Bush at a summit of top industrialized nations, but first he set out to soothe emotions on a sensitive Japanese issue that's entangled in the nuclear standoff with North Korea.

AP - A wildfire threatening thousands of homes in Southern California spread slowly through scenic canyonlands Saturday, straining resources as crews struggled to contain hundreds of other blazes around the state.

AP - John McCain calls himself an underdog. That may be an understatement. The GOP presidential candidate trails Democrat Barack Obama in polls, organization and money while trying to succeed a deeply unpopular fellow Republican in a year that favors Democrats.

AP - Barack Obama celebrated "active faith" as an obligation of religious Americans and a chief agent of societal change while speaking Saturday to a nearly all-black roomful of churchgoers, but hoping to reach far beyond them.

AP - The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program — a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.

AP - Even folks in the Optimist Club are having a tough time toeing an upbeat line these days. Eighteen members of the volunteer organization's Gilbert, Ariz., chapter have gathered, a few days before this nation's 232nd birthday, to focus on the positive: Their book drive for schoolchildren and an Independence Day project to place American flags along the streets of one neighborhood.

AP - The knock on Brian Hart's door came at 6 a.m. An Army colonel, a priest and a police officer had come to tell Hart and his wife that their 20-year-old son had been killed when his military vehicle was ambushed in Iraq.

AP - "The Bachelor" is a bachelor no more. Andrew Firestone, star of the ABC-TV reality show, married Serbian model and actress Ivana Bozilovic Saturday, Firestone's publicist Alisha Mahon told The Associated Press.

AP - Using his trusty BB gun to help him return to Earth, a 48-year-old gas station owner flew a lawn chair rigged with helium-filled balloons more than 200 miles across the Oregon desert Saturday, landing in a field in Idaho.

AP - Kyle Busch fell a lap down at Talladega and came back to win. So when a steering problem dropped him to the back of the field at Daytona, he didn't panic. He simply settled in for the long drive back to the front. And back to Victory Lane.

AP - Global challenges like soaring oil prices and the Earth's rising temperature await President Bush at a summit of top industrialized nations, but first he set out to soothe emotions on a sensitive Japanese issue that's entangled in the nuclear standoff with North Korea.

AP - The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program — a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.

AP - Iran indicated Saturday that it has no plans to meet a key Western demand that it stop enriching uranium, a day after Tehran sent the European Union a response to an international offer of incentives for halting enrichment.

AP - President Alvaro Uribe was master of ceremonies the night Colombian military intelligence agents disguised as humanitarian workers airlifted Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages to freedom.

AP - Military intelligence agents posing as aid workers and a film crew flew to the jungle aboard a white helicopter, staging a mock humanitarian mission that rebels were told would ferry their hostages to another camp for talks on a prisoner swap.

AFP - In the end it was a sneaking suspicion that the eyes had lost their iconic melancholy look that made Steiff realise that if you want top-quality teddy bears, there's no place like home.

AP - Inspectors are collecting soil, water and produce samples, reviewing export logs and combing packing plants in three major tomato-growing states in Mexico.

AP - Three decades after pumping its last drop, the first oil well in Nigeria is marked by a decrepit signboard bearing what would seem an uncontroversial statement: